Curators of our own history

Menu

Freshly Baked Cake

The shape of this baking pan is called Gugelhupf in German. It looks quite similar to an English Bundt cake pan. Yet despite similarities, Victoria W. maintains that her grandmother’s marble cake simply does not taste the same if baked in a differently shaped form.

The Gugelhupf as we know it today was probably invented in the 17th century. The cake has long been part of the afternoon coffee and cake culture in Germany and Austria. Coffee breaks are an important tradition, with the average German drinking around 150 litres of coffee every year, more than water or beer.

Victoria left Germany at the age of sixteen to attend school in Britain and went to the University of Bristol afterwards; she is now working as a lawyer in London. Having been around British classmates and colleagues for many years, she has had little contact with the German expat community and feels at home in her adopted country.

Nevertheless, the marble cake is one of the few little things that she misses in its authentic form; a taste that no similar British cake recipe or cake pan has ever been able to re-create. Victoria originally intended to bring an old copper pan to the UK, a family heirloom that she had grown up with. As her mother would not allow that, she bought this one instead about ten years ago in Essen, her hometown in the industrial heartland of western Germany. It is a delicious reminder of her roots and when she bakes marble cake for her English friends she shares those memories with them.